Friday, 1 July 2011

Chris Port Blog #291. Only Connect: Blog Data Analysis June 2011

Treading water while the sea boils, Marty’s legs are alive and kicking like a newborn Pelé. Welcome interest from Support Atheism.com in the United States means that he now has a chance of getting his foot slammed in much bigger doors. Every seagull dreams of leaving his calling card on the Statue of Liberty. The referee role of the arts in the ‘science versus faith’ punch up is the most promising development in this project to-date.

Unfortunately, the artistic side is still not pulling its weight. As co-ordinating writer, I’ve done my bit until the collaborative process gets under way. There has been some much appreciated support from various songwriting contacts (e.g. Songwriter), and drive-by interest from various musicians, but we’re still a long way from the creative team of composers needed to push the project through to funding stage.

On the Field of Dreams premise (“Build it and they will come”) I’ve set up a Facebook event scheduling Marty’s first multi-media workshop for next summer.

Marty Gull

Thursday 05 July 2012

19:30 - 22:30

Location: The world's first interactive, international political musical (currently 87 countries). London, and everywhere else. The main inclusion criteria is imitation transformed into innovation via wit.

I’m hoping that the impetus of a time frame may get people’s fingers out of their arses and tickling their keyboards.

My buttock cheeks clenched and squeaked though when people (including many I hadn’t even invited) quickly decided that they wouldn’t be able to tune into a website in a year’s time. I’m guessing that either their social diaries are incredibly busy, public support would be bad for their career health, or they just don’t like the project. The middle option makes perfectly miserable sense to me. The front and tail options are absurd padding. Lack of time may be “the zeitgeist of our age” but even Heads of State aren’t that busy. As for the probing question “what’s not to like?” I’ll leave that speculation for another time…

The collaborative aspect of the thesis is the most problematic. “L'enfer, c'est les autres” as the essential JP once pipe-mused (he also once claimed that “Slime is the agony of water”, which makes perfect nonsense to me). I’m often tempted to privatize Marty, perhaps farm out his kidneys to the beyachted gerontocrats who run our entertainment industry from their sunsick seraglios. But Marty is the NHS of musical theatre, forever short of funding, forever waiting, but worth losing an empire for. It’s a waiting game, a numbers game. The numbers are out there, somewhere. Only connect…

“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.” ~ E.M. Forster, Howards End, 1910

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About Me

I am a fully qualified teacher of Drama, Media and Film Studies with ten years’ work experience in secondary and further education. I graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama (one of the most respected Drama conservatoires in the world) with a first class Honours degree in Drama and Education and a PGCE.
I was a writer-in-residence and workshop leader for a Southend-based youth theatre for ten years, during which time I developed my creative writing skills to include playscripts, poetry and songs. With my deep interest in Film, I have now expanded these skills to include screenplays.
I now wish to take a sabbatical from teaching to focus on a proposal for a PhD thesis. This will involve developing new collaborative methodologies for intertextual musical theatre in the context of a resynthesis of art, philosophy and science.
My specific areas of interest and expertise are as follows: Academic, Acting, Analysis, Assessment, Auditions, Collaboration, Creative Thinking, Directing, Drama, Education, English, Film, History, Lecturing, Literature, Media, Poetry, Philosophy, Playscripts, Screenplays, Songs, Teaching, Television, Theatre, Tutoring, Workshops, Writing.

I’m writing a first draft for a musical. It's called Marty Gull (Marty[r] Gull[ible]). It's a surreal, satirical, tragicomic piece of musical political theatre: a cautionary tale of school politics, backstabbing egos and the state of the nation.

I’ve written the first draft libretto using a medley of melodies in my head from well-known musicals.

I would like to extend an open invitation to all budding musicians and composers to submit their own musical interpretations. I would also welcome interest from actors (age 20-25) who can sing and dance.

The plan is to develop a new collaborative form of musical theatre. Once we get a good working team of lyricists, composers, musicians, actors and designers together we can decide on the final evolution of the piece and arrange copyright accordingly. I would like to submit or even take the piece to Central as a work-in-progress.

Ultimately, I would be interested in using all of this as a springboard for a thesis on new art forms and musical theatre. But, most of all, I would love to have the opportunity of working with kind, creative and talented people.

If you like the sound of any of this, please post a comment at http://martygull.blogspot.com/or get in touch with me through one of the following methods: